Heart

“Heart” is a novel written as a student’s diary: it belongs to the genre known as Bildungsroman in German, which focuses on a character's journey to maturity and adulthood, highlighting the challenges they face, the journeys they undertake, and the lessons learned through mistakes and growth experiences. Edmondo De Amicis, the author of “Heart”, imagines that this diary is written by Enrico Bottini: an eight years old pupil of a school in Torino, a city in the North-West of Italy. He tells what happens in his classrooms from the beginning of the school year in October 1881 to July 1882. Each month of the school year is ended by a tale of his teacher, Giulio Perboni.